


days spent naked.

by winterwinterwinter



Category: Fargo (TV)
Genre: Ficlet Collection, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:02:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 12,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21748723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterwinterwinter/pseuds/winterwinterwinter
Summary: scraps of writing, explicit and not, excised from google docs.
Relationships: Mr. Numbers/Mr. Wrench (Fargo)
Comments: 20
Kudos: 16





	1. nonexplicit: "cowboy, take me away."

**Author's Note:**

> my google docs are bloated and who benefits? you! posting all of my wrenchers work, mostly unfinished ficlets. appropriate warnings (few and far between) will precede each, and each chapter title will indicate how explicit the content is.
> 
> i've done this before (i think?) but ended up deleting the collection. well. here we go again.
> 
> title taken from "oOoOO" by hearts. at least, i think. i was never able to decipher the lyrics and was never able to find them transcribed anywhere on the internet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: suicide mention.

**i.**

grady bought the cheapest plane ticket he could find, and he flew, and when he got off the plane, he hailed a taxi, and they drove. far, far away into the night.

“buddy,” the driver said, “buddy, if you ain’t got a destination, i’m gonna have t’just drop you somewhere. fare’s gettin’ up there, you sure you can pay it?”

grady looked at the rearview, through which the driver was squinting at him. “next exit,” he said.

  
  


**ii.**

there was a motel, and there was a bed and breakfast. the motel was cheaper, and the paint was chipping off every wall, and there were two bullet holes in the lobby window, and the clerk was asleep at the counter. so grady walked down to the bed and breakfast, bags in hand, taxicab long gone.

it was almost midnight, but the clerk was still awake, sitting in a thick, cozy chair, reading a book in low lamplight. she looked up at him, and smiled. she fiddled with her ear, and said “hello, wanderer” in a shaky voice.

“uh, hi,” he said. “need a - ”

“i know,” she said, standing and shuffling over to the desk, where she opened a thick guestbook. she flipped through it, and grady noticed all the blank pages. “fifty for the night. i’ll cut a deal if you stay the whole week.”

“what if i stay the whole month?” grady said, mumbling and half-serious.

“what?” she said, smiling. “speak up?” and he noticed the hearing aid fitted into her ear.

“sorry,” he said, full volume, “just - nothing.”

  
  


**iii.**

grady woke up to a knock on his door, and the innkeeper’s rough voice saying “breakfast is ready.”

he sat at the antique dining table in an antique chair and ate off of antique china eggs and toast and, fuck it, bacon, and he drank orange juice, and he tried to avoid the eyes of the big guy on the opposite side of the table, who kept glancing at him with a question in his eyes.

“this is my grandson,” the innkeeper said. grady looked at her. “my grandson, wes.” and she patted his shoulder fondly, and he looked at her fondly, and grady stared at them and felt like an outsider, which he was. “how old are you, wanderer?”

“twenty - ” and grady had to think about it, which made him feel a different kind of tired, and a familiar sort of sad “ - twenty, uh, four.”

the innkeeper smiled. “wesley is too,” she said, as if all two people needed to build a conversation was that.

grady chanced a look at wes, at his face, and dropped his eyes back to his plate when he saw that wes was already staring at him.

  
  


**iiii.**

grady spent a week locked in his room, counting and recounting the cash he had on hand, ignoring the ring of his cellphone until it died, and watching reruns of _gilligan’s island_ and _the brady bunch_ on the outdated little rabbit-eared television. he only left for breakfast.

  
  


**iv.**

on saturday, the innkeeper came to his room around dinner time. the bed and breakfast didn’t serve dinner - _hmm..._ \- but she came with a plate anyway, and he let her in mostly because his stomach rumbled and mostly because she had a key anyway.

“tumbleweed,” she said. “where you from?”

“what?” he said, holding the plate of food and staring dumbly at her.

“if i find you dead in here by next week, i gotta know where to send the bill,” she said.

“i’m not - i’m not dying here,” he said, “i didn’t come out here to kill myself.” but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t consider it, dumping the blades from his razor, taking a bottle of something and washing it down with another something, something golden brown.

“if you don’t leave this room tomorrow, i’m kicking you out,” the innkeeper said. she looked him up and down and smirked. “i know the only other place in this town is that roach motel.”

so on sunday, grady went back to his room after breakfast, and took a shower, and he left the house.

  
  


**v.**

grady took a walk around the block, and when he climbed up the porch, he saw the innkeeper in the window frowning, and clapping slowly, conceding victory.

  
  


**vi.**

the next day, the innkeeper asked for his key. and grady gave it to her.

“you can get this back when you come back tonight,” she said.

“where am i going?” he said, trying to rein in the anger teeming below his skin.

“wesley’s gonna take you with him,” the innkeeper said. “to his job at the ranch.”

  
  


**vii.**

wesley was just as upset, it seemed, as grady was over the arrangement.

wesley looked livid, a high blush on his cheeks and a crease between his brows as he emphatically waved his hands about, arguing with his grandmother. she shrugged off all his concerns, and said, definitively, to the both of them “that’s that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was meant to be an au inspired by the lyrics of "cowboy, take me away" by the dixie chicks, which is one of the greatest songs ever written. sincerely.


	2. explicit: tears.

for as long as wrench had been fucking him, all twenty years of it, numbers cried during sex.

sometimes it was just a few tears rolling down the side of his face. sometimes, he wept. but always he cried.

wrench freaked out the first time it happened. he was so startled, so scared, he pulled out and sat numbers up and said _did i hurt you? did i hurt you?_

_no,_ numbers said. _i don’t know why i’m crying._ he was red all over, the way he got when he lied, which made wrench skeptical. but he promised wrench he wasn’t hurt, he was _okay,_ he was good and _it_ was good, and so they tried again.

once, after a job that left wrench’s ankle in a brace for a month, numbers rode him and sobbed the whole time. he kissed wrench through it, restlessly grabbing his neck, his shoulders, his arms. he mumbled when they weren’t kissing, and wrench felt the words as breath against his face. _sorry,_ it was - “i’m sorry, i’m sorry, i’m so sorry.” because it was numbers’s fault. of course it was.

another time, they held each other and fucked with the lights out. it would’ve made wrench uneasy, but as long as numbers was there, it was fine - he was safe. wrench pressed their cheeks together in the dark and numbers’s was wet and sticky with tears. he sucked on wrench’s collarbone and clung to his shoulders.

_why do you cry when we fuck?_ wrench tried to ask once.

_what are you talking about,_ numbers said, looking annoyed, and that was the end of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i loved the idea of numbers crying during sex - completely overwhelmed with emotion - so much that i wrote around 200 words about it.


	3. nonexplicit: "...and one for your dreams, part two."

peggy wasn’t sure why she was still awake. maybe it was the foreboding feeling clinging to her, its shadowy hands on her shoulders. she had another one of those nightmares the night before, with fire and ice and pigs hanging from the ceiling on chains, and ed, sitting there, dead…

she shook her head, cleared her mind. she swung her legs out of bed and stood, dropping her book down onto the night stand. she grabbed her cardigan from where she’d left it, hanging off the back of her vanity chair. she threw it on over her nightgown and stepped into the hallway.

on her way to the porch, she hovered outside of wes’s bedroom and peeked inside, an old habit that was hard to shake. laying on his side in bed was her boy, snoring softly, the space beside him empty, his arm stretched out over it protectively. she smiled. ed used to sleep the same way, one arm limp across her chest.

“oh!” peggy said when she stepped onto the porch and saw grady there, sitting on the porch swing, a cigarette between his lips. he jumped a little, seeing her there in the doorway, and hastily took the cigarette from his mouth, stubbing it out on the railing. “so that’s where you went.

“young man, why are you out here at midnight?” peggy said, sitting down next to him on the swing.

grady was at the knutson household nearly every day, every night. he and wes had been attached at the hip ever since they met years ago, a week after peggy and wes had moved in. they were like each other’s shadows, wes moreso than grady, usually. it was sweet, how close they were - close enough to share wes’s bed on the nights that grady slept over. close enough that it worried peggy a little, what other kids might say to them.

grady, ever the conversationalist, grunted at her. “wes’s snoring,” he said.

peggy laughed. “oh, you think that’s a snore, mister?” she said. “you shoulda heard my husband. made the whole room vibrate…”

grady eyed her, she could feel it.

“you’re good friends, aren’tcha,” peggy said, “you and my son.”

“yeah...” grady said vaguely, looking out across the yard. “he’s, uh - a good friend.”

peggy smiled to herself, and rocked her foot back and forth on the porch so the swing would sway.

“be careful,” she said, looking down at her lap. she felt grady look at her again. “with him, be careful.” and she hoped he knew what she meant without having to say it - that she would kill him if anything bad befell her boy, her sweet, kindred spirit.

peggy went back inside, eventually. for a long time she just sat on the porch, swinging, listening to the cacophony that sprang from the grass, from the trees. all the insects singing, frogs croaking in the distance. on her way back to her room, she stopped again at wes’s door and peeked inside.

it was just the same as before, except that grady was laying beside wes, tucked under his arm. grady was curled so close they were almost nose-to-nose, and the boy so known in the knutson house for his grumpiness looked so peaceful, laying there beside wes. peggy smiled, and turned away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wrote a fic you can read called "...and one for your dreams" after i watched season two for the second time and felt bad for peggy. i forget how, but my friend and i got really into the idea of peggy adopting wrench as a child - that's what the fic mostly deals with. this was going to be a single-chapter continuation, but then i got distracted.


	4. nonexplicit: domesticity, part one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: surgery mention, ableist language.
> 
> note: trans numbers.

grady didn’t cry so much anymore. when they were kids, he was such a crybaby - he cried when he was angry, he cried when he was sad, he cried when he was happy. but anymore, he seldom cried. killing people for a living probably had something to do with it.

when he woke up from surgery, and looked down at himself, he started crying right away. _it was the drugs,_ he’d try to say later, _i wasn’t in the right frame of mind._ but wes knew, of course he knew, and he’d cried a little bit too.

grady was going to be laid up in bed for another week, it seemed. and then after that - he had to take it easy for awhile. tripoli had found a couple of assignments to keep wes’s time, and as wes laced up his boots, sitting on the edge of their bed, he looked over at grady. grady, who was asleep again, head lolled off to the side.

wes picked through the blankets, looking for grady’s hand, and he found it. he stroked over his knuckles, smiling when he felt grady’s fingers twitch. grady opened his eyes, and looked over at him.

_i’m leaving,_ wes says. _you’ll be fine for two days?_

_i’m not a cripple,_ grady says. _i’m gonna be fine._

wes shrugs. _i know,_ he says.

grady sighs, and shifts a little in his spot. _be quick about it,_ he says. his eyes say what he can’t - i miss you already. _need you here._

_do you?_ wes says.

_yeah,_ grady says, sliding his eyes closed again, ending the discussion.  


wes leans over and peppers his face with kisses until grady swats him away. wes plants one on his lips, lets grady lean into it, and pulls away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> had a file full of domestic prompts that i was trying to work through one by one. numbers was explicitly trans in this series, which - numbers is always trans and, many times, the object upon which i project. i only mention this because (i think) the series was to open with this fic, in which he is recovering from top surgery and they are in their mid-twenties (i think), about to buy a house with their ill-gotten gains.


	5. nonexplicit: domesticity, part two.

wrench is shifting from foot-to-foot, staring blankly at a wall of paint swatches that rainbowed back and forth from red to purple and back again, with shades of brown and gray in the middle. numbers keeps walking up and down the display, brow creased with concentration. he’s got a few swatches in his hand, green and brown and gray, but he’s still looking.

numbers whirls, turning to wrench. he holds up the swatches in one hand and asks _what about these_ with the other.

_i had no idea you’d get so into homemaking,_ wrench says, raising an eyebrow when he notices numbers’s ears turning red.

_if i’m gonna live in this goddamn house i’m gonna make it perfect,_ he says.

_you mean the bedroom isn’t already perfect?_ wrench says. numbers pretends to gag, sticking his tongue out. the last resident had painted the bedroom a truly aggressive shade of red that reminded them both too much of the job.

_do you care about this?_ numbers says.

it’s only a little insulting that numbers thinks wrench doesn’t care about making their house a home, but he shakes off the feeling and tries to fix it by saying _whatever color you pick is gonna be perfect._

numbers breathes hard through his nose. _i want to pick a color together,_ he says slowly. his mouth moves in a familiar shape, one wrench can read without even trying - “wes.”

they went home with two swatches - green and brown - and two sample-sized cans.

  
  


_ did you have to shoot him? _

numbers rolls his eyes. _get me home,_ he says, slumping in his seat. both of them are tired and dirty.

_just because he thought my color was nicer?_ wrench says. he’s not starting the car until he gets what he wants out of numbers. _is your fuse that short?_

numbers looks out the window, and it’s clear then that they’re not going to get anywhere with this. wrench huffs and throws the keys in the ignition. if he didn’t feel like hell warmed over, he’d keep them locked and stationery in their car until numbers stopped being a little shit. but, he wanted to go home too.

they break down right around nightfall, car coasting to a stop on the side of a long, empty road lined by split rail fences on both sides. wrench watches numbers scream out of the corner of his eye when they finally lurch to a halt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> these are definitely out of order, but whatever. i read a fic awhile ago in which wrenchers asked a mark his opinion on paint for their home, but i can't find it - anyway, that detail was definitely stolen from that piece. this was also written before i made an important executive decision about the property they were supposed to have bought.


	6. nonexplicit: domesticity, part three.

it was perfect. not too big and not too small, not too far from civilization but just far enough that they would have all the peace and quiet they wanted. even the price was good,  _ suspiciously  _ good.

and then they saw it.

the house - well, it was perfect. on paper. in actuality, it was an old, rundown school building, the kind wrench’s grandparents must’ve walked two miles each way to and from in their time. it even had a bell set into its steeple, perfect for ringing the children in from recess. the impressive antiquity of the bell was complimented handsomely by the graffiti across the front door: _wilson eats ass in hell._

the realtor, a woman named harriet with a comical, out-of-time brown bouffant and a neck brace, smiled at them as she waved an arm. she said something that wrench couldn’t decipher, what with the way she spoke: with her teeth unmoving, grinning always.

numbers bridged the gap. _she wants to know what you think,_ he said.

_what we think or what i think?_ he said.

_you, specifically,_ numbers said.

_ tell her i’m not impressed. _

of course, he knew numbers wasn’t telling harriet that he wasn’t impressed. he was probably making up some lie about how wrench was “thinking it over.” it was probably better to do that anyway.

harriet took them inside. there was debris everywhere - fallen bricks, rubble, old wood, some leaves. harriet stuck by numbers’s side, chatting at him about this and that, so wrench took it upon himself to stroll around the hilariously dilapidated schoolhouse. there was still a chalkboard on the wall, with even more graffiti scrawled across it: pentacles and penises and all types of slurs.  
  
  


_she called the place a love nest,_ numbers said later.

wrench eyed him, and shrugged. _she’s not wrong,_ he said.

_i didn’t like when we had to pretend to be friends or cousins or what-the-fuck-ever,_ numbers said, _but i think having strangers wink at me like that is worse._

_ you don’t like when people insinuate about your sex life? _

numbers threw his head back and groaned. _i don’t want this suburban bitch thinking about us,_ he says.

_get over it,_ wrench says. _we’ll close and she’ll never think about us again, baby._

_not your baby._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i flip-flopped constantly between them buying an old school house or an old church. where i live, there are a few old school houses that became homes - there's one, specifically, i've always coveted and wanted to know what the inside looks like. so. projecting my desires.


	7. explicit: domesticity, part four.

it’s four in the evening, and wrench is driving. numbers is in the passenger seat next to him, their local paper spread out over his lap. he’s scrutinizing the classified ads, eyebrows nearly touching as he intently scans the paper. he’s adorable like this, and wrench thinks he could only be more perfect if he was curled up on the couch at home, wearing his glasses instead of his contacts. but instead they’re tucked into the car, driving back from a job well done.

they roll to a stop behind a truck at a red light. wrench taps numbers on the wrist and says  _ anything yet? _

numbers makes a face, a little snarl, and says  _ no. apartments too small, houses too big. _

their lease on their shitty place in fargo was only a few months off from being over. they paid their rent the month before last and that same night wrench said  _ are we gonna renew? _

numbers had shrugged.  _ we have some money now, _ he said.  _ work’s been good. steady. maybe we can look at other places. _

they’d been laying in bed, reading and looking over maps and plans for their next job - the one they were on now. numbers was shirtless, the twin scars on his chest faint and faded under his thicket of chest hair. wrench had drawn his eyes up to numbers’s face then, staring back at him plainly. his beard hadn’t been trimmed in a few days - they were off the job, and so they were laying low and taking it easy - and there were little bags under his eyes from staying up late watching  _ i love lucy _ marathons and having sex.

a warm wave of adoration had crashed over wrench ( _ why is he perfect? _ he thought.  _ how is he mine? _ ) and he couldn’t help himself.  _ do you think we have enough to buy a house? _ he’d said without thinking.

the light turns green, and numbers goes back to his work while wrench returns to driving.

wrench imagines numbers as goldilocks, pouting over the bowls of porridge, the chairs, the beds. each too this or too that. he pictures him in an ugly little frock and an old-timey petticoat, and smiles as he pulls into the parking lot of their motel.

they roll to a stop as wrench parks. numbers is still absorbed in the ads, so much so that he doesn’t even move once wrench has turned off the car, the vibrations cut off around them. wrench is content to sit back in his seat and watch numbers, at least for a little bit.

eventually, he reaches out and roughly wipes at numbers’s cheek with his thumb. there was a perfect little circle of blood there, probably leftover from when he’d hacked into their target’s neck. numbers shakes him off and glares.  _ what gives? _ he says.

_ had some blood on you, _ wrench says.  _ sorry, _ he adds, imitating numbers’s indignant, bratty expression.

numbers sneers. he closes the paper, rolls it up, unbuckling his seatbelt.  _ let’s go, asshole, _ he says before getting out.

_ what? _ wrench says after slamming his door shut and stretching out, shaking off his sore legs.  _ something about your asshole? _

_ no! _ numbers snaps.  _ i called you an asshole!  _ numbers can’t suppress his grin. he rolls his eyes before swatting at wrench’s chest with the rolled newspaper before stalking off toward their room. wrench gladly follows, close behind like always.

wrench walks out of the bathroom after nightfall, skin tingly-warm from the shower, to see numbers spread out on the bed as beautifully naked as he had been when wrench had first gotten up to take his shower. numbers sits up.  _ i found one, _ he says, rare boyish glee spread over his features.

wrench returns his grin as he joins him again on the bed.  _ apartment or house? _ he says.

_ house, _ numbers says.  _ it sounds perfect. _ he kisses him then, immediately sliding his hand into his hair. numbers tries to deepen the kiss, but wrench pushes him away.

_ are you going to tell me about it? _ wrench says.

_ maybe, _ numbers says,  _ if you eat me out first. _

numbers is a brat, but wrench is the fool for indulging his desires. he settles himself between numbers’s thighs and anticipates the after of it all, when numbers will tell him all about the house he found in the newspaper that they could maybe make a home, as if two people like them deserved something soft like that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i definitely posted this one and then deleted it. this was before i decided on the kind of house.


	8. explicit: boy in blue.

numbers has one fantasy.

wrench peeks through their blinds and watches as numbers, in a blue short-sleeved shirt and navy trousers, sidles up to their front door. he stops to regard his own house through dark sunglasses, and then he raises his hand to knock. wrench smiles as he watches. numbers shifts from foot to foot, his hands gripping his belt around his hips.

wrench waits until he sees numbers’s mouth move - most likely in a rehearsed curse - and then he pulls away from the window and goes for the front door. he opens it just as numbers has raised his fist to knock again.

wrench raises his eyebrows. _is there a problem, officer?_ he says, trying to exude innocence.

numbers’s mouth opens and closes. his brow furrows, and he touches a hand to his own ear. he tries to speak (stumbles over “can you hear me?”) and wrench can’t hear him, of course. _good at playing dumb,_ wrench thinks. figures.

wrench smiles and holds a hand up. he grabs the little notepad he keeps by the front door, next to their landline. already scrawled on the front is _i’m deaf; problem, officer?_ he shows it to numbers.

numbers, brow still knit, leans in to read. wrench can’t see beyond the dark sunglasses, but when he’s done he straightens back out. he motions the notepad over. wrench hands it off, gives him a pen.

_are you joshua farmer?_ it reads when numbers hands the notepad back. it’s wrench’s least favorite of his aliases. he rolls his eyes as he reads it - of course numbers would choose this one. he nods. numbers takes the pad back.

_can i ask you a few questions?_ he asks next. wrench nods again, then moves aside in the doorway and motions a hand, asking if he wants to come inside his own home. numbers acquiesces and walks in like he owns the place which, he does.

wrench leads him to the living room off to the right and has him sit on the firm, navy couch he picked out himself. their decorative sensibilities tend to clash, but numbers forced himself on the living room. it turned into a whole big thing, but wrench couldn’t lie, he loved how cozy it was, gray and blue and white.

numbers looks around like the house isn’t his own. he gently takes off his sunglasses with one hand. wrench is thirty years old and he still can’t help but melt a little when numbers looks at him with those pretty brown eyes of his. he resists a smile and sits up straighter instead.

numbers writes on the notepad. _i have a few questions about the evening of march 3rd,_ the paper says. wrench nods. numbers gets back to work. _do you remember where you were?_

wrench was where he is every night they’re not on the job - in the very house they sat in, laying on the couch reading while numbers made dinner. numbers handed him the notepad. _at a bar in town,_ he writes.

he watches numbers read the notepad with a knit brow. he can see the gears in his head turning as he decides what to do with this and watches as he barely bites back a grin. he scribbles like a madman. _witnesses from the bar say you beat three patrons in a brawl and once the police got there, you exposed yourself to them,_ the notepad says.

wrench has to bite both cheeks to keep himself from giggling. he tries to darken his expression. he glares up at numbers and rubs the notepad between his thumbs, considering.

finally, to move the afternoon along, he settles on: _did you come to see?_

numbers’s eyes go wide, and on the notepad next is just a big question mark.

wrench allows himself a grin. he sits back in his seat a bit, lounging, and watches numbers’s eyes very obviously drift toward the crotch of his pants. numbers is turning red in places - his cheeks, his neck. splotchy red, like usual. he meets wrench’s eyes and bites his lip.

numbers returns to the notepad. under the question mark, he writes _they said it was nice._

this game is ridiculous, but hell if wrench isn’t having a fucking _ball._

wrench has to switch to signing - he can’t take passing the notepad back and forth anymore. _is that what they said, little pig?_ he says. numbers isn’t supposed to understand him, per the rules of the game, but obviously he does. he gets redder. _did you come on your own to see it for yourself because you’re a little pervert? or did they send you because they know you’re hungry for cock? i can see it on your face._

numbers speaks. “i-i can’t understand you, sir,” he stammers. he looks scared. wrench is impressed at his acting and he has to hold back a laugh when the image of grady, age eleven, in their middle school production of _annie,_ clumsily dancing through a scene wrench can’t remember springs forth in his mind. who knew?

wrench stands up and walks around the coffee table between them. he makes a show of dropping his eyes down to numbers’s crotch, the navy pants tented by his erection. numbers tries to crawl backward into the couch, feigning terror and barely disguising his dirty little grin. wrench grabs him by the wrist with one hand and gropes at his dick with the other. numbers struggles in his grip.

numbers is saying something that doesn’t matter. (“sir, i’m an officer of the law, you can’t do this…”) wrench strokes at him, squeezing his wrist in his other hand. numbers jerks in his hold. wrench eyes the shiny fake handcuffs that sit on his hip.

wrench uses both hands to grab numbers by the belt and haul him to his feet. numbers stumbles, and for a moment the game is broken because wrench steadies him very carefully, but numbers slaps his hands away and gives him a look. wrench rips the handcuffs from his belt, holds them in his hands. he looks at numbers. numbers looks scared.

once wrench has numbers handcuffed, hands behind his back, he presses his front against the door. he holds him down with his superior height, his shoulders broader than numbers’s. he presses against him from chest to ankle, and he grinds against numbers’s ass, and he feels numbers making himself shake. he slides his hands from numbers’s waist to his hips, so familiar and so perfect. he pauses the game for a minute, content to rock against numbers and smell his hair and hold him close like this. he breathes, takes it all in. and then, he grabs numbers by the chain of the cuffs, and sends him tumbling to the floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fuck the cops, am i right? i was looking at dirty writing prompts and landed on roleplay and i never felt wrenchers would do something like that until i thought of this.


	9. explicit: halloween.

**1981.**

the last time grady went trick or treating, he was twelve.

his costume was half-assed. he wore his brother’s long black coat, his father’s hat and carried a plastic pistol, and suddenly he was a gangster. “without the gun,” his sister said, “you just look like an asshole.”

wes showed up before seven carrying his costume under his arm, a single white sheet with two holes cut out. in his other hand was his pillowcase, limp. grady couldn’t help but grin at him, and after wes threw the sheet over his own head, adjusting it so he could see through the holes, they ran like dogs into the night.

**x**

**1990.**

“fuck,” grady groaned. “ugh, fuck.”

whoever said sex wasn’t a workout had never ridden a guy before - grady’s thighs were  _ burning _ as he bounced on wes’s dick. he let out a rumble and ran his own hand through his hair, dislodging the black cat ears he’d been wearing. laurie strode screamed on the tv behind him.

wes’s hands on his hips stilled him and then wes was kissing him frustratingly slow. grady sighed against his mouth.

_slow down,_ wes said. _take it easy._

_i’m trying to come,_ grady said. _and my legs are killing me. if you wanna go slow then fuck me yourself._

_why didn’t you say?_ wes said. _just lay down and let me do it._

_ don’t make it sound like such a chore! _

wes grabbed him around the hips and moved, guiding grady downward. laurie screamed again as grady laid his head down. wes grinned. _this way i can watch the movie without your fat ass in the way,_ he said.

“you wish my ass was fat, fucking jerk,” grady said, smiling.

wes was all talk anyhow - as soon as he was situated, arms braced against the bed on either side of grady’s head, his eyes never left grady’s face.

afterward, they dressed, putting on their coats and shoes. wes replaced the discarded cat ears on grady’s head. _it’s halloween,_ he said. grady wrinkled his nose.

_halloween’s for kids,_ he said.

_you’re the one that put them on and said trick or treat before we fucked,_ wes said.

grady flushed - _you’re such an asshole._

they held hands as they stalked down the streets, past chubby kids in power ranger costumes and lanky teenagers and tired-looking parents. grady wouldn’t usually - he knew what people thought of guys like himself and wes, but it was dark and no one was paying attention to the two young men wearing black and walking with purpose. besides, touching wes and being touched by him helped to quell his nerves, and his nerves were something tonight. he was in a strange town walking among strange people, on his way to a strange house where they would kill a strange man in his own bed.

wes squeezed his hand. grady squeezed back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was meant to be a four-part oneshot about different halloweens for wrenchers, but i didn't make it on time and also just never finished. similar to my valentine's day story "when & when & when & after."


	10. explicit: sex medley.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> note: trans numbers. this is a compilation of pieces - they're not directly related.
> 
> warning: frankness about genitalia (?)

more often than not, they fuck to feel each other - to feel each other’s flesh and legs and arms and hands. it’s less about sex or coming and more about being together. when he can, when he’s not screwing his eyes shut and sighing, numbers stares up at wrench, looking at him like he hung the moon in the sky.

*****

_ mr. levin, you’re a virgin, aren’t you? _

_ i don’t like this game anymore. _

numbers got up to leave, but wrench, his hands like vices, grabbed him and pulled him back. numbers back was now flush against wrench’s front, and he could feel wrench’s cock filling out against his ass.

_it’s okay, i was nervous my first time too,_ wrench said, reaching through numbers's arms and using his chest instead of his own. _i had a good partner though._

“damn right you did,” numbers said, even though when they fucked for the first time numbers just laid there useless, too hot and too wound up to do anything

one of wrench’s hand slipped under numbers’s waistband. numbers sighed and pushed back against wrench as his fingers brushed his cock.

*****

there was grady, kneeling before him, proffering his beautiful mouth.

“come on my face,” grady said absently, his mind faraway and fucked out. he said it aloud again, voice reedy and desperate, before the synapses in his brain fired and he remembered where he was and who he was talking to - _come on my face,_ he said with his hands, clumsily.

wes got the gist of it.

*****

the heavenly triumph of making grady come, throbbing and writhing against his tongue, with just his mouth and two of his fingers, barely in to the knuckle. wes didn’t relent as grady trembled and rocked under him, just kept lapping at him and gently prodding, nudging him along his orgasm until grady pulled his hair sharply - hard enough to sting - and guided him backward.

*****

grady whispered, somehow without shame, “fuck me fuck me fuck me” and when they were finally doing it, what they both had been waiting for, grady was surprised because wes whimpered as grady sat in his lap, calves astride his thighs. wes sighed and he gasped when grady moved - slowly, slowly, and then all at once. grady braced his hands on either side of wes’s head, against the wall behind him, and closed his eyes because he almost couldn’t bear to watch wes watch him like that, to know he was memorizing every movement, drinking everything in. he could feel wes’s hands on his hips after a while, stationery, and then slowly gliding upward until they reached grady’s cheeks. wes’s palms were warm on his face. “fucking hell,” grady mumbled.

*****

_you’re so sexy,_ wes said.

grady, who was very much not sexy, not even a little bit, was taken aback. but he grinned uneasily and said _fuck off._

wes sat forward, still very much naked, and said _i mean it._

*****

_ where’d you learn to do that, gay boy? _

numbers is grinning wryly, and wrench knows instantly that he’s had that one prepared for a minute.

wrench can’t help his blush. he looks at his hands in his lap, then says _magazine._

_fucking with me?_ numbers says, sitting up. his breathing is still heavy. his body is so - nice. he’s all pale and soft and hairy in all the right places. wrench shakes his head. _a magazine._

_a dirty one,_ wrench clarifies.

numbers throws his head back and laughs. _you were reading dirty magazines?_ he says, obviously tickled by the idea.

_so i could figure out...,_ wrench says. he’s feeling a little embarrassed, so he leans in and kisses numbers with his mouth still hot and sticky from numbers’s cunt. numbers moans against him. 

_can you eat ass like that?_ numbers says.

wrench is sheepish, but not sheepish enough. _i’d give you a tongue bath if you wanted,_ he says. _i’d lick you all day and night._

wrench is so brutal in his honesty, in his desires, that it’s numbers’s turn to be bashful and pick at at the blanket beneath them. he laughs, a little nervous, and wrench sticks his tongue out and wags it at him. numbers laughs again, and he beckons wrench closer, and when wrench comes closer they kiss.

*****

_ ow. _

wrench took one hand from numbers’s thigh and looped it around his wrist instead. he had both hands tangled in wrench’s hair, and with every lick, it seemed, his grip got tighter, which stopped being sexy five minutes ago. wrench pulled and numbers loosened his grip for all of two seconds before wrench pressed a finger inside him.

wrench pulled back, sitting up on his knees. numbers glared up at him, a pissy expression on his face, nose locked in a half-snarl.

_either you stop ripping my hair out or i’m tying your wrists together,_ wrench said.

wrench didn’t miss the way numbers pressed his knees together and shifted his gaze around when he said that. of _course_ he’d be into that.

wrench leaned in and kissed numbers. numbers moaned, and wrench toyed with his cunt, running his fingers through his folds and pressing thoughtfully against his hole.

*****

numbers is a kinky fuck. he likes it all - getting choked, getting spanked, being called a slut, being tied up, getting manhandled. wrench has never really understood it. but he does what numbers wants, with some reservations - numbers once asked him to slap him, on his face, but that just felt… wrong.

wrench doesn’t have many kinks. there are some things he’s wanted to try, but there’s a difference between curiosity and burning desire. numbers lusted after his things - the choking, the dirty words. wrench just entertained the possibilities.

but if there was anything special that got wrench off, it was this.

he’s laying, numbers’s legs slung casually over his shoulders, and he’s sucking on numbers’s thighs. he’s going slow, licking delicately before picking a spot and closing his mouth over it. he’s running his hands up and down numbers’s thighs, nice and slow, and numbers has one hand in his hair, grip light.

they’ve been at it for maybe thirty minutes now, and wrench was planning on a long night. he loves it when he gets to do this, go nice and slow and have a field day with his partner’s body. nothing gets him more turned on than grady’s pleasure, than taking care of grady and showing him how wanted he is.

*****

wrench is looking down at numbers, braced above him by one hand on the mattress. his other hand is pressed against numbers’s neck, so he could feel his voice while they fucked.

_what?_ wrench mouths.

numbers wraps his hand around wrench’s wrist and presses harder against his neck before taking his hand back to say _you can be rough if you want._

wrench bites his lip. he eases on the hand on numbers’s neck, brushing his fingers across it, feeling the bob of it as numbers swallows. he looks a little nervous under wrench. he looks like he’s trying not to look nervous, keep his eyes neutral and alert, but the quirk of his eyebrows gives it away.

wrench slides his hands across the bed, searching for numbers’s hands as he leans down to kiss him. he finds them, and he holds them, and he feels numbers grunt against his mouth, feels him sigh after he starts thrusting again.

later, after they’ve come and cleaned up and gotten nice and cozy in their awful little bed in their ramshackle little room, numbers says _what was that about?_

_what?_ wrench says.

_when we were fucking around, you ignored me,_ numbers says, _after i said that._

wrench shrugs. _you didn’t want that,_ he says.

*****

_this is special,_ wrench says after reading numbers’s command. _have i been a good boy?_

numbers adjusts himself as he approaches. _no, brat,_ he says.

_your eyes okay? you know you're not in front of a mirror?_ wrench says, feeling smug, satisfied.

“my god,” and numbers rolls his eyes, smiling despite himself as he crawls onto the bed. wrench grins back.

_to what do i owe the pleasure?_ he says before numbers distracts him with a kiss.

_remember the other day?_ numbers says, answering his question with another. and wrench does - two nights ago wrench hadn’t been able to keep his hands off his partner, not through dinner, not while they tried to sit on the couch and half-sleep through an hour of nova on pbs. wrench had thrown numbers down on their bed and had his way with him, made him come at least twice before the night was through.

a little dazed from the memory, wrench says _yeah._

the light catches numbers’s dick, and it shines a bit, glowing with the wetness of the lube. he adjusts himself again, fiddling with the straps. _well, i wanted to show you a good time too,_ he says.

_you’re so sweet,_ wrench says.

numbers smiles. _don’t get used to it,_ he says before tossing the lube up onto wrench’s chest. _you wanna prepare yourself or do you want me to?_ he says, right to the point.

wrench takes the tube in hand, pushing numbers back onto his ass with one hand. _let me,_ he says.

*****

numbers blinks up at wrench. _what?_ he says.

_think the condom broke,_ wrench says again.

seeing him repeat himself breaks the spell, and numbers is laughing bitterly. despite the fact that his hysterectomy had happened nearly eight years ago now, and he and wrench hadn’t used a condom since, numbers was taken back to being twenty-two and sitting prostrate in their dark apartment, anxiously awaiting wrench’s return from the store with the magic pill. _jerk,_ he says as wrench flops down beside him. _you have to make dinner now. as punishment._

_i like making dinner though,_ wrench says, _you’re the one that whines about it._

numbers rolls his eyes.

_gonna have to call your mom,_ wrench says, _tell her the happy news._

_you think you’re_ so _funny,_ numbers says, twisting his mouth so it doesn’t look like he’s laughing. because he’s not. not much, anyway.

_i know i’m funny because i always make you laugh,_ wrench says, smug.

numbers snickers. _can you imagine that shit?_ he says. _‘hey mom, know we haven’t talked in fifteen years, i’m not dead, i kill people for money, and i finally have that grandchild you wanted. and i have a great beard and i’m married to that deaf kid that used to live down the street.’_

_she would have a heart attack,_ wrench says.

_good riddance,_ numbers says.

they lay motionless beside each other for a moment. wrench rolls onto his side, watches numbers laying and breathing. his chest is still shuddering with heavy breaths; he hasn’t come down from the high just yet, not quite. he looks back at wrench. wrench smiles at him.

_fuck you,_ numbers says, _you’re so handsome._ he heaves himself out of bed, and wrench lays back, openly admiring his smooth, pale back, and his cute, hairy ass. he watches numbers dress, shrugging on a sweater and some boxers, throwing a cardigan on over all of it - he looked so different at home as opposed to on the road. wrench would never prefer him any other way than warm, bundled, safe.

numbers hovers in the doorway, staring back at wrench on the bed. _what do you want for dinner, baby?_ wrench says.

_surprise me,_ numbers says, shrugging. _but make it good._

_you eat your weight in scrunyuns every other day,_ wrench says, swinging his legs over the side of their bed, _you wouldn’t know good if it bit you on the ass._

_you did bite me on the ass, the other day,_ numbers says as wrench approaches.

_yeah, you hated it,_ wrench says.

_caught me by surprise,_ numbers says.

*****

numbers blinks hard. he’s pretty sure he read that right, but - _come again?_ he says.

_i want to fuck you right now,_ wrench repeats, glaring hard at him over the top of the mark’s head. he licks his lip. numbers lets himself shudder before he regains what little composure he lost.

_well, you can’t,_ numbers says, jutting his chin out, trying to make himself at least look just a little more authoritative. as if he had any power, when it came to the two of them and their thing.

the mark coughs between them. he’s tied to an old, rusty folding chair, twin knives holding either foot to the floor. “wh-what’re you fellas talking about?” he says.

numbers grins down at him. the guy shrinks back in his seat a bit. “oh, buddy, you don’t wanna know,” he says. “let me just say it involves you and me and some pliers.”

the guy starts weeping - christ, embarrassing - and numbers looks back over at wrench.

numbers bites his lip to keep himself from shouting. _are you hard?_ he says.

wrench shrugs - shrugs! - like it’s not a big deal that he’s hard as fuck while they’re on the job. _told you,_ he says all casual. he sidles over to numbers, walking behind the guy so he doesn’t catch sight of the tent in his pants and lose his shit. numbers takes a tentative step back, but wrench just gets in his face.

past wrench, numbers can see the guy eyeballing them, probably wondering what the hell is about to go down between the two brutes that nabbed him from his office that afternoon.

numbers doesn’t see the guy’s eyes bug out of his head when wrench cradles his jaw and tips his head upward so they can kiss.

_no!_ numbers says, shoving wrench. “come on!” he growls.

wrench looks cross, big brat, and he tries to go in for another kiss. his advance is met by numbers’s palm smacking his chest.

_can we at least kill him first!_ he says.

wrench rolls back on his heels. he stares down at numbers, considering, before he whips his pistol from its holster on his hip and dispatches a shot to the guy’s temple before numbers can even blink.

“god,” numbers says, _you are so fucking lucky we got what we needed an hour ago._

wrench throws the gun back into its holster and doesn’t reply, instead advancing on numbers until his back is pressed against the nearest wall and then kissing him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my longest doc, besides the ones for my multichapter work, was the one where i dumped every dirty sentence i ever conjured with them. i think sometimes, with numbers explicitly trans in a sexual setting, i was trying to project - trying to imagine what it would be like if i didn't feel uncomfortable in my body so much during intimacy.


	11. nonexplicit: halloween, part two.

“you wanna come with me and go do the monster mash, baby?”

numbers winced. “you know, uh, _nathaniel._ i was considering it, but now…”

the look on nathaniel’s face told numbers that he knew he struck out. to his credit, he merely sighs and tips his drink in numbers’s direction before melting back into the crowd, leaving numbers alone in a room of hundreds once more.

fighting with wrench was… frustrating, to say the least. numbers sipped daintily at his tequila, wincing at the taste. nothing made him lonelier, or angrier, or hornier than four days of wrench’s cold shoulder. it was even worse when they were on the job, which they were, and had no one but each other for miles.

“fucking hell,” numbers mumbled as he watched wrench walk through the door of the bar. he downed the rest of his drink, screwing his face up. he slid off his stool with a last glance at wrench, who seemed like he was looking for him - _duh, he’s obviously fucking looking for you. asshole._

numbers does a quick inventory of the crowd. he’s looking for the oldest guy in the place. or, the oldest guy in the place that’s still fuckable. or - the oldest guy in the place that numbers could deign to flirt with. he spotted a silver fox sitting alone at a booth with a tall glass and he pounces, stalking through the crowd toward him, popping the top two buttons on his shirt as he goes.

numbers slid into the seat opposite the silver fox, who perks up immediately, eyes drawn first to numbers’s heavy eyes and then to the little v of flesh revealed by his unbuttoned collar. “well, hello there,” he said, grinning.

“hi,” numbers said.

“you seem a little… distinguished for a place like this,” the silver fox said, eyes jumping from numbers’s beard to his suit jacket and shirt. he caught sight of the letters arching across the top of numbers’s chest. “or… maybe not.”

numbers forced himself to chuckle. “needed a break,” he said, touching his own collarbones. a tease.

“hm. from what?”

“mm, my boyfriend. he doesn’t appreciate what he has.”

“he doesn’t?” the silver fox said. “now, why wouldn’t he appreciate a man as handsome as you.”

“beats me,” numbers said, preening a bit at the compliment. “he can be so _up_ tight.”

“uptight.”

“yeah, he doesn’t really know how to… unwind. y’know?” numbers punctuated his sentence by rubbing the silver fox’s ankle with the toe of his shoe. the silver fox leaned into it.

“and you do?”

“yeah,” numbers said, toying with the third button on his shirt. “i do.”

the silver fox jerked back a bit, his eyes focused behind numbers suddenly. numbers felt a familiar hand on his shoulder, and knew he was done for. “speak of the devil,” he said, sliding over to let wrench sit.

wrench only looked a little pissed. there was a lightness to his face, an amusement. he looked at numbers with an eyebrow raised, zeroing in on his open collar. _whore,_ he said, waving against his cheek twice. numbers glared at him.

“is this…?” the silver fox said.

“my boyfriend,” numbers said, smiling. “must’ve come looking for me.”

“i don’t blame him,” the silver fox said. he sat back slightly and looked at them both. “handsome pair you are.”

“oh yeah?” numbers said, grinning. he looked at wrench, nudging him. wrench was glaring at the man. “don’t mind him. he’s got a jealous streak.”

“is that right?”

“he’ll probably take me home and punish me,” numbers said. as if - wrench was difficult to coax into that kind of stuff. numbers _wished_ he lived in a world where wrench would just choke him without being told to.

the silver fox shifted in his seat. wrench tapped numbers’s shoulder. _what are you saying to him?_ he said.

_jealous?_ numbers said.

instead of answering, wrench tugged numbers’s shirt to the side and started kissing his neck. numbers let out a huff of breath, surprised. turned on. wrench sucked on the soft flesh between his neck and shoulder; numbers’s skin burned under his mouth. the silver fox looked interested. turned on.

“tell me,” numbers said, “you have anyone waiting for you at home?”

the silver fox swallowed and shook his head.

numbers smiled. “wonderful,” he said. “wanna go for a ride?”

the silver fox doesn’t last twenty minutes in their company. wrench brains him with a tire iron once they’re out far enough.

_you really are the jealous type,_ numbers said as he watched the silver fox writhe on the ground. wrench hit him again and he stilled instantly.

wrench eyed numbers, a pissy look in his eyes. _don’t like when others play with what’s mine,_ he said.

_is that right?_ numbers said, approaching. wrench nodded. numbers rested both palms on wrench’s chest and he felt him loosen, watched his shoulders droop. “what did i do to deserve you…” numbers wondered aloud. wrench leaned in and kissed the corner of his mouth.

_ would you ever have a threesome?  _ wrench was looking at numbers kinda bashful, almost like he didn’t want to be asking. but he was. numbers shook his head.

_it turns me on to think about sometimes, but no,_ he said. he didn’t want to explain why, didn’t want to have to say _thinking about sex with someone besides you makes me uncomfortable, i only want you to fuck me ever._ and it was true. numbers couldn’t bear to hook up with someone else and have to teach them what made him feel good when wrench already knew. hell, wrench helped him discover those secrets about himself in the first place. 

_me either,_ wrench said, and that was the end of it.

they killed the man because they wanted to, and because they could. they killed him because they were only twenty-eight and they weren’t tired of it yet. it felt good. it felt like nothing.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was going to be the penultimate segment of my halloween piece but then i got really into it and it... became its own thing. i like grumpy, crabby, messy numbers - i like him trying to seduce a man when wrench is getting on his nerves and being thwarted, or just clamming up and realizing he can't.
> 
> i don't write it often, but i also like wrenchers young and reckless and blood-spattered,


	12. nonexplicit: "you and i and no one else" outtakes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: implied sexual activity between minors (mention).

wes’s hands were holding his stubbly, unkempt cheeks, thumbs stroking under his eyes. _oh my god,_ grady was thinking, _oh my god._

and so, wes was kissing him in the backseat of his mother’s car. grady shivered; they should’ve grabbed a blanket. wes noticed, felt the tremble under his hands, and tugged off his jacket without a second thought, throwing it over grady’s shoulders.

_what about you?_ grady said.

_doesn’t matter, not cold,_ wes said before putting his mouth back on grady’s, more urgent this time. grady grasped at his scalp, the hair too short to tug, and he remembered wes’s hair before he left, how curly it was, how red it had been. _what did he do to you?_ grady thought, running his hands over wes’s hair, the texture of it matching the stubble on grady’s own face.

they made out, and rutted recklessly against each other - not shy; not virgins, exactly, but scared, a little, of their own desires - and eventually dozed off for a few hours, both waking before the sun, just in time to sneak back into the house, into wes’s bed.

_don’t you have school tomorrow?_ wes said. grady was still wearing wes’s jacket - tan corduroy, with a cozy, shearling lining. the nicest thing he owned, for sure.

_fuck it,_ grady said, staring unabashedly at wes’s face. his beautiful, beautiful face - grady kissed him again, again, again -

“fuck it,” the man said, laughing. “fuck it.”

_how,_ grady said.

the man smiled at him, that strange, serene little grin. “does it matter?” he said, sincere. “does anything really matter in this moment, grady levin? this moment, in this…” - and he waved his hand around - “...place. does it matter?”

_no,_ grady thought, _all that matters is if he’s okay._ and he glanced, again, over at the window. the day had faded, fallen to the shadows of the night, but grady could tell. the snow was still falling.

*****

one of the guys at fargo - a scraggly fella with thin, leery eyes - told wes where he would find grady - no, “numbers” - but still something itched at him as he stood before it. it was a dive bar, that much was certain, but there was something about the clientele. something simultaneously familiar and alien. especially in the way they regarded wes with eyes half-lidded.

the inside stank of smoke and alcohol, a scent so thick wes could swear he literally felt it pressing on his lungs. he coughed and shouldered his way through the crowd until he found his way to the bar, which, he realized as he stumbled, sat upon a dais.

from the bar, it was easy to sweep his eyes over the crowd, the crowd of men and only men. wes had been praised for his keen eye, and it didn’t fail him in the bar, which throbbed around him, pulsated with music. paired with the red lighting, it made wes feel like he was walking around someone’s insides - red, alive. he scanned the crowd twice, and didn’t see grady anywhere.

wes turned then, a little resigned, and a little guy crashed right into him. he felt the front of his shirt turn heavy and wet immediately.

the little guy looked apologetic, and he threw up his arms and babbled, an empty glass in one hand. wes waved him off at first. when that didn’t work, he threw a few words at him, enough distinct signs that the guy would figure it out and just leave him alone: _it’s fine, not your fault, wasn’t looking where i was going._ and to his credit, once he realized wes couldn't hear him, he looked even more apologetic, but he melted back into the crowd almost instantly. 

wes found the bathroom easy enough, wading through twisting bodies, some entangled. the damp patch on his shirt left him with a shiver running down his chest, and it wouldn’t be until later that he would realize that trying to staunch it would be futile, but he resolved to try. it probably wouldn’t stain, but he liked this shirt. least he could to was try to stem some of the liquid soaked into it, or shuck it and button the flannel he’d thrown on earlier over his bare chest.

wes looked up from the sink, where his shirt still hung over the edge as he tried to sponge up the alcohol, and watched as some tall, older-looking guy with a cocky look in his eye walked out of the bathroom stall that wes had noticed shaking when he’d first entered. the guy walked to a sink a few down from wes and got to washing his hands.

a moment later, after the guy had left, that same bathroom stall door swung open once more and suddenly wes was face-to-face with grady. grady, whose face was red, hair a dark tangle, the edge of his shirt damp. grady, who was looking at him like he’d seen a ghost.

they stared at each other through the mirror awhile, just looking. grady eventually, tenderly, made his way to wes’s side, and he said _what are you doing here?_

_guys at fargo told me you hang around here,_ wes said. he decided not to pussyfoot around anything - not his information, where he’d gotten it, and why. _was looking for you._

grady cocked his head. he looked like he was trying to decide between asking why or - something else. _here i am,_ he said.

*****

grady roared and turned the radio up, up, up until he could feel his every follicle vibrate on the beat. he clenched the steering wheel in his fists and let out another pathetic, anguished roar, more tears slipping out of his eyes.

“fuck you too!” he shouted, his rough voice drowned out by neil finn:  _ hey now, hey now, don’t dream it’s over. _ “ _ fuck _ you!”

he was just outside town, almost home, when he hit the patch of ice and went skidding into the snow at the side of the road.

_ sometimes i’m scared of you, _ wes had said. grady felt it, a javelin through his heart, a knife in his back, and then wes kissed him. a hard kind of kiss, firm and feeling very sure of itself. grady tightened his grip on wes’s face, and he felt one tentative hand on his shoulder.

_why would you be scared of me,_ grady thought as wes kissed him again, both hands on either shoulder, _now. i’m not scary - i just love you._

though grady had known it all along, secret knowledge folded into him, tucked away for years and years and years, it still hit him like a wave and shook him to his core. _i love you, i love you,_ he thought, pulling his knees onto the seat, trying to crawl over the center console -  _ i love you _ .

*****

“sorry i made your life so fuckin' hard,” grady growled at himself. “sorry i held you back.”

_ i never said you were the problem, _ wes said.  _ i think about you every goddamn hour of every goddamn day - _

_ i don't think about you, _ grady said, the worst lies he'd ever told in all seventeen years of his life spilling from his hands,  _ i don't think about you  _ ever _. i just drove here because i  _ could, _ that's what dropping out does, frees up your whole fucking day. _

_ i want us to be together again after i graduate, _ wes said.  _ thick as thieves? _

grady's heart had nearly stopped. _together?_ he thought, _together?_ _ so what, _ he said,  _ you're gonna fuck off and live a life and read some stupid fucking books and come back for me and collect me just like that? am i supposed to wait for you? _

wouldn't you want to? grady read all across wes's face. _wouldn't i want to?_ he thought. and he knew he would wait for wes for a hundred years - two hundred, a thousand - if it meant at the end of his waiting they would always be by each other's side. but grady was young, and grady was dumb, and grady was hurt -

“fuck you - fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> these scenes either appeared in YAIANOE before my rewrite or i just had no place for them in the end. i like quite a few of them still.


	13. nonexplicit: outsiders.

wrench and numbers stalk across the parking lot, matching scowls on their faces. numbers leads, wrench following close behind like a shadow. mr. glass watches them as they settle into the seats of their shared gold buick, wrench in the driver’s chair.

“imagine bein’ a fly on that wall,” glass says to mr. right, who’s smoking a cigarette beside him. they’re leaning against the exterior of the restaurant. right was in need of a smoke break and glass, like a good friend, offered to join him. he tosses his still-smoldering cigarette butt to the ground.

mr. right laughs as the buick peels out of the lot. “jesus,” he says, “i’d rather not.”

glass stares at the parking spot that the buick used to occupy. “who d’you think’s in charge?” he says absently. “numbers, or stretch?”

“in charge?” mr. right says. “you mean, _like_ \- ?” he’s about to pantomime - something, but glass throws a hand up.  


“yeah, like that.”

mr. right shrugs. “numbers is a controlling little bitch,” he says, “and he’s so particular. i’d imagine it was him.”

glass thinks about it for a moment, numbers pressing wrench’s shoulders into the mattress, ordering him around without signing - something that glass had never seen him do, but in his imagination it felt right for the situation, a way to assert dominance. he imagined wrench following him around in their own home, looking like a puppy on a leash. submitting. it seemed wrong to glass, perverse in a way that imagining them fucking wasn’t. he wrinkles his nose.

“hm. no,” he says. “you ever been out in the field wit’ wrench?”

“mm-mm,” mr. right says around his cigarette.

“wrench’s a beast in the field,” glass says. “no joke. you know that, uh - silent but deadly, you know? god, you know, once there was this big fuckin’ fiasco - you weren’t around yet - with those fucks from nevada and a bunch of us was there, and wrench and numbers was there. and numbers gets grazed - not _shot,_ mind you, i mean still a lot of blood, but it was just a graze - and wrench sees red - like, figurative. it was horrifying, like truly horrifying. ripped those guys apart.”

“so,” mr. right says, “so what? miss mark could do the same thing but that wouldn't change that when she fucks she’s takin’ it.”

“so i’m saying,” glass says, “i think you got the whole dy - fuck is that word? - _dynamic_ wrong. and i saw them with the doc afterward and, jesus man, wrench was sat there with him, holdin’ his hand, lookin’ at him this way that reminds me of my wife.” it was sweet, really - glass wasn't as wary of the pair as others were, and he was a bit of a hopeless romantic at heart. or, as hopeless a romantic he could be shooting holes between men's eyes every other night of the week.  


“fuckin’ flamers, glass.”

glass laughs. “don’t let them hear you say that, right,” he says. “beast, i’m sayin’. fuckin’ beast.” he lights another cigarette and imagines wrench putting numbers in his place with a smile, carrying him to bed with ease, like a husband might take his wife across the threshold. he imagines numbers with his face buried in a pillow -

“they know that everyone knows?” mr. right says.

“open secret,” glass says. “has been since i’ve been here.”

“mm,” mr. right says. “trip don’t give a shit?”

“he’s soft on ‘em,” glass says. he remembers that old picture he caught a glimpse of once, of the little boys that would one day become two of tripoli’s greatest assets and a man with all his face bandaged but his eyes, which were unmistakable. “y’know. practically raised them as his own.”

“no shit?”

“no shit. took ‘em in, started ‘em young. used to be runners. on bikes, if you could believe it.”

exactly once numbers had gotten drunk enough at the bar to let a few scattered details loose from stories he wouldn’t tell. glass learned more about his coworkers that night than he had in nearly a decade of working with them. wrench was there, too, that night. stoic as usual, sipping on an orange soda, one of his hands on the small of numbers’s back all night. it reminded glass of himself with his wife - sweet rhonda anne, the apple of his eye.

“bikes,” mr. right says.

“bikes,” glass echoes.

they stand silently for a moment. the sky, gray and streaked by wispy clouds, churns above them. mr. right starts laughing.

“what?” glass says, smirking a little.

“numbers,” mr. right says, “bottom bitch.”

glass laughs a little despite himself. “don’t say that to his face, right. that bottom bitch’ll put your eye out, swear to god,” he says.

mr. right snorts. “dunno how many eyes he can put out if he’s busy takin’ stretch’s cock,” he says. “i’ll say what i want.”

mr. right is young - twenty-six, a former soldier. hot-headed. thinks he’s got the right idea all the time, the way all young people do, the way glass did once. he’s built, but what he has in strength he lacks in smarts. the next day, wrench and numbers come in to pick up an assignment, and mr. right makes the mistake of leering openly at numbers before saying: “hey, num’, you alright? you look a little tired. hey, you limping? wh - ”

he barely gets a chance to finish his misplaced ribbing before numbers’s fist connects. in an instant, mr. right is on the ground, cradling his cheek, and glass can't help but laugh from his vantage point on the other side of the office.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was meant to be the first in a three-parter about how wrench and numbers are perceived by outsiders - coworkers, seen here, as well as a random waitress in a diner and also their landlady. each would be a different interaction, a different level of intimacy from the outside looking in. i just never got around to finishing.


	14. explicit: untitled.

**1\. cuddles.**

wes wakes up, jolting out of sleep, his entire body twitching under the dead weight of grady’s arm slung across his hips.

the television is flickering over them on the ratty brown couch. through static wes can make out little black and white faces. he glances around and sees the light at the top of the basement staircase, under the door, is dark - he turns to look at the opposite wall, at the clock. just past one in the morning.

grady is still asleep against him, forehead resting against wes’s collarbone, and wes can feel grady’s breath creep against his chest with every exhale.

wes pulls back as much as he can, trying to look at grady. but he can’t get a good look, so he just wriggles his left arm out from where it’s pinned, asleep, between grady’s side and the couch. he grabs at the blanket on the other side of the couch, managing to tug it over with two fingers. he spreads it out over them both before grabbing the remote control and clicking the TV off.

wes shifts under grady just so, just to make himself more comfortable. grady - limp, sleeping - resettles against him without waking.

wes, hesitant but emboldened by his friend’s sleeping, slides his hand down grady’s spine through his sweatshirt, settling against the small of his back. gently - so gently - he sets his cheek on top of grady’s head. his dark, bird’s-nest-messy hair tickling his lip.

wes sighs, stomach fluttering, and slides his eyes closed.

  
  


**2\. kisses.**

they’re sitting in the front seat - wes in the driver’s seat, grady in passenger - of a discrete beige sedan lent to them by fargo parked behind a dumpster at the back of a warehouse. they’re eighteen, and they’re both terrified.

it’s their first like this. inside the warehouse are men, waiting for them. drugs, waiting for them. there are guns in the trunk, in the glovebox. boxes of ammunition, a first aid kit, somewhere -

grady startles when he feels wes’s fingers on the back of his hand. he jumps in his seat, hand shooting to his chest.

_OK?_ wes says, eyebrows up. he’s better at hiding it than grady is, but grady can still tell when he’s uncomfortable. it’s in the draw of his shoulders, the line of his mouth, the jiggling of his leg.

grady chuckles despite himself. _no,_ he says, _but we gotta do it._

wes’s jaw clenches. he nods.

grady takes a deep breath, exhales. he clicks his seatbelt open, turns to open his door when again he feels wes’s hand on him, his shoulder.

grady turns back, and wes’s other hand is on his cheek, and wes’s lips are touching his.

grady’s heart jumps in his chest, a joyous leap, before shooting straight back down into the pit of his stomach. his eyes are wide open - shock - and he watches wes kiss him. his eyelids look beautiful, pink and soft, his eyebrows are knit with fear, with worry. grady has never felt more wanted before in his life.

wes does nothing more than hold their mouths together, semi-stationary, for a moment. he pulls back with a soft sound and his eyes open and he stares at grady.

grady remembers how to move, and he dives in. he holds wes’s denim-clad shoulders in his hands, runs his fingers through the long curls at the back of wes’s neck as they kiss again.

they stride into the warehouse fifteen minutes later, and grady feels like he can take on the whole damn world.

  
  


**3\. first time.**

it’s not sexy, and it’s not elegant, and it’s nothing like TV, like the movies, like porn promised. but it’s better.

they’ve been content to just hump and rut and masturbate together for awhile now, but they got home after an evening of paperwork - paperwork, paperwork, who knew organized crime was so much paperwork - and they fell into bed, and -

_i want to,_ grady said, _i really want to this time._

wes’s heart skipped a beat, and he swallowed hard around his dry throat, and he felt himself throb in his jeans, and he said _OK._

they fumbled their clothes off, hands shaking, and kissed and kissed and kissed with their fronts pressed together - chest to thigh - just as they had so many times before. wes was sliding his hands around to grasp grady’s ass when he realized -

_we don’t have condoms,_ he said after shoving grady away, _we don’t have lube._

grady stared blankly at wes, and wes watched his face darken, cheeks flushed cherry with embarrassment. _i guess i got ahead of myself,_ he says.

wes smiles at him. he leans in, nuzzles his neck, reaches to squeeze his ass anyway. grady laughs, breathy.

  
  


grady holds them both in a spit-slick hand, and wes has two similarly spit-wet fingers wedged inside grady. grady’s trim, blunt nails cut into wes’s shoulder, teeth tearing at his neck. wes kisses everything his mouth can reach - cheek, sideburn, earlobe.

and it doesn’t take long, even after the setbacks. grady’s body, so soft, so pale, so pliant, tenses against wes’s, and he bites extra hard, and he clings as best as he can, and wes watches as he comes in his own hand, down his own knuckles, and wes isn’t far behind.

_first thing tomorrow,_ grady says later, tired and clean, _we’re going to the store._

  
  


**4\. masturbation.**

when wes is gone, grady’s best friend is his right hand.

sometimes, fargo will send one of them off on his own. wes is off on a solo job, just an overnighter - a drive, a bullet, a quick disposal and he’ll be back home, safe and a thousand dollars richer.

but tomorrow isn’t tonight and grady is hot and prickly all over, horny and hard and missing his boyfriend, his partner.

so he lays himself down in their messy bed, naked, and takes the lube from their nightstand. he closes his eyes, and in the blackness of his mind he sees wes a few nights before he left, kneeling between grady’s knees, mouth searing and wet around his dick. grady groans, pressing his face sideways into their bare pillows. he remembers wes’s eyes, green and pale, gazing up at him -

grady pages wes afterward when he’s still breathing heavy, sweat-drenched. _finish job asap,_ he writes. _need u._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i found a list of intimate/sexual prompts that i wanted to trace their relationship through. so, i went through them and organized them by what age i thought they would be most likely to have performed those actions first or most often during. obviously i never finished. i think i was going to take them up 2006, when numbers dies, so mid-thirties, i guess. late? who knows.
> 
> ended up using basically the same intro for part 3, first time, that i used for a similar short in my other collection, loosen up my buttons(, babe). definitely posted part 1, cuddles, at some point and deleted it later.


	15. explicit: sex medley, part two.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> note: trans numbers, except for the first piece. or i guess the first piece could count too. this is a compilation of pieces - they're not directly related.
> 
> warning: frankness about genitalia (?)

the first time wes and grady had sex, they were sixteen. on the old brown ripped up couch in wes’s basement. they were just watching TV - some monster-of-the-week deal - and suddenly grady’s hands were on wes’s chest, and wes’s were on grady’s face.

they watched TV after, too, and laid naked, huddled in blankets, wes’s hand caressing grady’s lower back. they laid there until grady heard the door upstairs slam, and two sets of feet stomping, and they threw on their clothes, and took turns scrubbing their bellies in the basement bathroom.

the last time wrench and numbers had sex, they were, what… in their mid-thirties? it was cold as hell, and if anyone would’ve crossed their path at that moment, they would’ve seen the buick rocking.

they’d spent the night in the drunk tank with lester “oh golly gosh gee darn” nygaard. numbers, after two decades, still had a bad habit of getting all hot under the collar watching wrench rough up bastards and idiots. they made bail - thanks, fargo - and the moment they made it back to the car in the bar parking lot -

they weren’t as young as they once were, but they weren’t so old, either. and they still had it in them, every once-in-a-while, folding themselves up and fucking in the backseat: numbers’s calves over wrench’s big shoulders, both of their pants undone just enough to facilitate a quick fuck; numbers’s hands holding wrench’s face, like always - _eyes on me, need to see you, i get off if you get off._ wrench’s hand pressed against numbers’s throat.

“baby, baby baby - ” numbers babbled. “fuck, _fuck!_ ”

numbers liked to kiss when he came. he brought their mouths together, more a bite than a kiss. he felt wrench snap his hips forward, once, twice, finally -

“that was good,” numbers mumbled to himself, to the car. “that was fucking good.”

*****

grady is wearing a faded, ripped white t-shirt, and he’s perched on wes’s face. he’s got a stump of a lit cigarette between his fingers, and as wes sucks on him he runs a hand restlessly through his own hair, cursing. “oh - jesus fuck,” he says. he’s fighting to stay upright, everything in him just screaming at him to buckle, to lay down and just let wes fuck him already. he moans, and with great effort brings his cig up to his mouth.

*****

wes was content to kiss grady’s nipple, his chest, his collarbones, as he fingered him slow, considerate, gentle - he played with his cock, stretched him out, bit his neck - “i’m ready,” grady mumbled to himself, “i’m ready, i’m ready, fuck me already.” he didn’t bother grabbing wes’s attention or signing - he’d get wes’s dick soon enough, and he was _so_ close as is - he bit his lip hard enough to bleed as he came, feeling himself ripple around wes’s fingers. wes kissed him through it, thumbing at his cock. grady groaned into his mouth, falling back against him.

grady panted, laying there with his eyes closed. he felt wes’s lips, tracing a halo around his face. their mouths met again, grady weakly kissing back. he heard the unmistakable sound of wes’s hand against his dick; he opened his eyes and saw him slowly stroking himself. _chill out,_ he said, _aren’t you gonna fuck me?_

_still want me to?_ wes said.

_absolutely,_ grady said. _kiss me._ he tilted his head up, and wes was already there, kissing him and kissing him.

_fuck, you can just come and come. would you… ?_ wes said, grasping his dick and wagging it at grady. grady smirked and reoriented himself, sliding off the bed to rest on his knees before it. wes sat on the edge, palming himself as he watched grady get situated.

when grady was ready, he leaned his cheek against wes’s knee and raised his eyebrows. wes smiled at him, scooting forward a bit and leaning back. grady sat up and took his cock in hand, breathing on it before opening his mouth and taking it in.

grady wasn’t the best - having one boyfriend for six years and not having a lot of exposure to porn in his boyhood left him mostly clueless - but he wasn’t the worst either, at least not anymore. he was worse off when he was seventeen and they fooled around for the first time, clumsy and clueless. he was better now, no teeth, no ache in his jaw, no choking - just his tongue and his hot mouth and wes’s hand in his hair, nudging and encouraging him.

wes let out a strangled groan above him, the hand in his hair grasping tighter. grady whined a little around his cock, he couldn’t help it. wes’s hand in his hair locked around his locks made him crazy every time. _that’s so good,_ he thought distantly, and then an image came to him unbidden, and he whined again, pulling off of wes’s cock for a moment.

wes looked down at him. _if i didn’t want you to fuck me so bad,_ grady said, _i’d just have you finish on my face._

wes’s eyebrows jumped up toward him hair. _you want that?_ he said.

_no,_ grady said, _i_ want _you to fuck me. but if you weren’t gonna…_ he shivered at the image in his head: come on his cheeks, across his mouth.

wes sighed. _you can’t just say that!_ he said. _jesus, grady, now i want to… let me paint your face._  


grady shivered again, imagining it, but instead of indulging him he stood up and parted his knees over wes’s lap, sitting on him. _too bad,_ he said. _fuck me._

wes’s expression changed from wanting to a look of deviousness. _you can’t ask nicely?_ he said.

_no,_ grady said.

wes sat up as much as he could with grady in his lap. _too bad,_ he said. grady rolled his eyes. _only boys that ask nice get what they want._

_don’t be a cock,_ grady said.

wes grasped his chin roughly. grady’s heart jumped a little in his chest in just the right way. _ask nice,_ wes said with one hand. he was smirking, looking smug - but there was darkness in his eyes, something hard and base lurking behind his smile. 

grady rubbed his fist against his chest - _please?_ he said. wes just watched, having taken his hand back. _please?_ grady said again.

_please what?_ wes said, looking a little bored.

“christ,” grady mumbled. _please fuck me,_ he tried again.

_not enough,_ wes said.

grady shoved him. _fuck me!_ he said. he went to shove wes’s shoulder once more, but wes caught his wrist and kissed him. grady squirmed against him.

_fine, big baby,_ wes said. _how do you want it?_

grady crawled off wes’s lap and laid on his back, nestling down into the pillows. he let his legs fall open, grinning impishly up at wes.


End file.
